CULTURAL WORKINGS

Welcome to THE CULTURAL WORKER, a blog dedicated to arts of the people ranging from the radical avant garde and free jazz to dissident folk forms and popular arts . The Cultural Worker celebrates revolutionary creativity and features a variety of essays, reviews, fiction, reportage, poetry and musings through the internet pen of this writer, musician and cultural organizer. Scroll straight down and you'll also find an extensive historical Photo Exhibit of cultural workers in action, followed by a series of Radical Arts Links. The features herein will be unabashedly partisan---make no mistake about that. The concept of the cultural worker as a force of fearless creativity, of social change, indeed as an artistic arm of radicalism, has always been left-wing when applied with any degree of honesty at all. No revolutionary act can be truly complete in the absence of art, no progressive campaign can retain its message sans the daring drumbeat of invention, no act of dissent can stand so strong as that which counts the writers, musicians, painters, dancers, actors, photographers, film and performance artists within its ranks. Here's to the history and legacy of cultural work in the throes of the good fight...john pietaro

It was a
chilly, overcast morning as members of the New York State Nurses Association
and 1199 SEIU took the Brooklyn and Bronx streets. Registered Nurses,
Technicians, Social Workers, Dietitians, environmental and clerical staff have
been in contract negotiations with dialysis juggernaut Fresenius Kidney Care for
over two years. Both unions’ negotiation proceedings have been riddled with
negativity from the employer, globally the largest and most profitable of dialysis
providers. Fresenius boasts a dense network of facilities across the Americas, Europe,
the Far East and other regions. Recent reports state that the company’s profits
are in the range of $1.5 BILLION.

“Our
clinic is staffed short almost every night”, said Stacey White RN, a Fresenius
employee and NYSNA delegate. “All I can say is that Fresenius just doesn’t seem
to care. Many evenings, we have only two instead of the necessary three nurses
on duty--and management has no plan to bring in another. Techs are scheduled
the same way. This can jeopardize our patients’ safety”. The union healthcare
professionals and technicians have regularly voiced their protest to such dangerous
staffing practices.

Bernadette
Hankey-Johnson RN, long-time Fresenius employee, felt similarly. “We are always
so busy. If the nurses and Techs weren’t so vigilant…” Nurse Hankey-Johnson
looked away pensively, tightly clutching a placard reading PATIENTS BEFORE PROFITS. In
the distance others on the line began cheering as truckers’ horns sounded out
in support. The thicket of traffic on Atlantic Avenue joined in noisily, excitedly.
HONK FOR PATIENT CARE! another
placard asked, and passing police cars rang sirens resoundingly.

The unions
involved have bargained in good faith toward fair contracts, seeking to
maintain union health benefits and pensions, and acquire moderate raises and incremental
differential increases for experience. Employees’ last saw raises more than six
years back. NYSNA is also seeking a clinical committee to elicit change as
needed for safe staffing. However Fresenius continues to present harsh
proposals which would take away health benefits and pensions or obliterate union
security. The choices have been flagrantly disrespectful.

In 2015 Fresenius
closed the Brooklyn Kidney Center, a union facility, and initially stated that
the clinic opening in its place would continue to honor the twin union
contracts. Though management and the unions met to arrange for the laid-off
staff to move to the new site, Fresenius leadership later informed the unions that
the company will not honor its earlier promise. The company claims that
the site on DeGraw Street in Gowanus is not a replacement but a new operation.
Many Fresenius employees remain laid-off after the closure and none have been
offered work opportunities at the expansive DeGraw site. NYSNA filed charges of
Unfair Labor Practice with the National Labor Relations Board against
Fresenius’ actions.

As more
staff came out to join the picket, they stated that management, for the first
time in memory, had ordered in lunch for them. “But none of us are partaking”,
reported Mercedes Anderson-Draggon RN. “Because this lunch they’re offering is
not free. The ultimate cost is too high”.

By day’s
end, as the strike vote was tallied, it was clear that both NYSNA and 1199 SEIU
members were fully prepared for to embark on whatever was necessary: all had
voted to authorize a strike. 1199 will be meeting with Fresenius for a
negotiation session on April 26; NYSNA activists will be there with them. The
outcome of this will be the actual deciding vote as to what comes next. “We
don’t want to strike”, one of the unionists told a sympathetic passerby, “but
we will if we have to”.

About Me

John Pietaro, writer/musician/cultural organizer; Staff Writer, The NYC Jazz Record. Contributing Writer: Z Magazine, the Nation, CounterPunch, the Wire, many others. His latest book, ON THE CREATIVE FRONT: ESSAYS ON THE CULTURE OF LIBERATION, is under review for publication. Pietaro also wrote a chapter for the Harvey Pekar/Paul Buhle book SDS: A GRAPHIC HISTORY (2007 Hill &Wang). In 2013 he self-published a volume of contemporary proletarian fiction, NIGHT PEOPLE. Current projects: co-writing/editing the autobiography of Amina Baraka; authoring a novel. Founded NEW MASSES MEDIA in 2013, production/ publicity company. As a musician Pietaro performs on the NYC free jazz/new music circuit on hand drums, drumkit, vibraphone, percussion, voice. Over the years he has created music with Amina Baraka, Alan Ginsberg, Pete Seeger, Karl Berger, Fred Ho, Ras Moshe, many more. Leader: the Red Microphone. Founder/producer, annual Dissident Arts Festival. Pietaro has spoken on arts activism at Left Forum, the Vision Festival and other venues. He is a member of the Author's Guild, PEN America, National Writers Union UAW 1981 and Jazz Journalists Association

NIGHT PEOPLE and Other Tales of Working NY

'THE RED MICROPHONE SPEAKS!' CD, 2013

"Revenge of the Atom Spies" (2007)

The Flames of Discontent: Laurie Towers & John Pietaro ..................SCROLL DOWN FOR an extensive 'PHOTO EXHIBIT' of cultural workers in history and a thorough list of 'RADICAL LINKS' !

'Little Red Song Book'

still fanning the flames

John Reed and Boardman Robinson, 1913

The revolutionary writer and political cartoonist in Europe

Edward Hopper

"Night on the El Train", 1918

Anti-War Dance

Anti-War Dance - WW1

Louis Fraina

Writer and early Communist movement leader was later purged from the CP in a haze of controversy. Currently all traces of him remain disappeared from official Party documents

William Gropper: "Revolutionary Age", July 1919

Organ of the Left-Wing of the SPUSA (roots of the CPUSA), edited by Louis Fraina

The Funeral of JOHN REED

1920--at the Kremlin Wall

'Metropolis'

Fritz Lang's powerful depiction of a futuristic society ruled by a lazy bourgeois totally dependent on the laboring of the workers in the depths of the city

'New Masses', 1928

Amazingly hip artwork by Louis Lozowick

Brecht in Leathers

Somehow encompasses all that was 30s Berlin and 70s New York all at the same time

The chilling art of Fred Ellis

from "The Daily Worker", 1931

Debs, with Max Eastman and Rose Pastor Stokes

The patron saint of the Socialist Party working closely with Communist Party cultural leaders--the arts can climb above the fray

'The Red Songbook'

compiled by members of the Composers Collective of NY, a CPUSA cultural organization

Langston Hughes

Eisler and Brecht

Composer Hanns Eisler and poet Bertolt Brecht, revolutionary artists

'Song of the United Front''

music by Hanns Eisler, lyric by Bertolt Brecht

Sid Hoff, 'The Daily Worker', 1930s

"Thank God he doesn't have to swim with the dirty masses in Coney Island"

Paul Robeson

performing for British strikers, 1930s

Stuart Davis

at work

'The Anvil'

Organ of the John Reed Club, 1934

The Rebel Song Book, 1935

Socialist Party cultural publication compiled by SP poet and journalist Samuel H. Friedman. In these fervant years Friedman almost singlehandedly led the Socialist arts program which included much live perforamnce, literature, lectures, gallery exhibits and even the radio station WEVD, named for Debs, which broadcast radio dramas, music and speeches.

The League of American Writers

1936 statement on the urgency of the Spanish Civil War by this powerfully united group of Left and liberal writers, coalesced through a CP initiaitive. The League was an an outgrowth of the American Writers Congress. As strong as this grouping was, its creation also sounded the death toll for the more radical John Reed Club, which was dissolved by Party leaders this same year.

'Waiting for Lefty', 1935

The Group Theatre's debut production of Odets immortal agit-prop play. Yes, that's a young Elia Kazan out in front shouting 'Strike! Strike!" decades before the crisis of conscience and career which saw him naming names in his second HUAC hearing. But wasn't this a time?

'Proletarin Literature in the United States'

1935, the first serious collection, edited by Granville Hicks and featuring the work of Mike Gold, Isidor Schneider, Joseph North, and other noted writers of the day

Artists Union

American Artists Congress, 1936

depicted by Stuart Davis

The Benny Goodman Quartet, 1937

Goodman's combo was revolutionary in that it was fully integrated in a time of terrible racism--further the Quartet laid down the ground work for all chamber jazz to come. The blurring solos of Lionel Hampton's vibraphone brought that instrument into the forefront as a major voice in jazz; Gene Krupa's drumming in this period also created a major role for percussionists in all aspects of this genre. Not to forget Teddy Wilson's brilliant piano playing and the clarinet of the leader!

Partisan Review editors, 1938

Phillip Rahv and Dwight McDonald and co.

'Native Son'

Richard Wright's groundbreaking novel, 1940

Disney Cartoonists Strike!

1941--the very radical cartoonists' union takes the studio by storm

Josh White, Leadbelly and friends

1940, NYC, BBC radio airshot

Leadbelly

"Bougeois Blues"

Carl Sandburg

He covered the march of Coxey's Army, became an early Socialist Party cultural worker and was still a beloved, celebrated elder of American folk culture!

John Howard Lawson, HUAC Hearing

speaking back to power

Hollywood on trial

The Ten included Herbert Biberman, screenwriter and director Ring Lardner Jr., screenwriter John Howard Lawson, screenwriter Edward Dmytryk, director Adrian Scott, producer and screenwriter Samuel Ornitz, screenwriter Lester Cole, screenwriter Albert Maltz, screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter Alvah Bessie, screenwriter Also the great Charlie Chaplin left the U.S to fink work because he was blacklisted. Only 10% of the artists succeeded in rebuilding their careers.

Dalton Trumbo

HUAC hearing

Arthur Miller

HUAC vs the playwright

Paul Robeson, 1949

immediately after the Peekskill Riot

Ralph Ellison

'Invisible Man'

The Weavers

Lillian Hellman

Wonderfully atmospheric shot of the brilliant playwright who stared down HUAC

'Masses and Mainstream'

1953

'High Noon', 1952

Gary Cooper stars in the film by blacklisted writer Carl Foreman, a perfect allegory for the isolative stand of those who opposed HUAC and McCarthy

'Howl' by Allen Ginsberg

The militantly revolutionary Gay poet's groundbreaking work, 1956

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee

the couple modeled the concept of the artist/activist with their brilliant acting abilities and consistent place on the front lines of the struggles for civil rights and labor unions

Beat Poets

In this 1959 photograph taken in New York City, composer/musician David Amram (top right) is seen with some of the artists, poets and writers who would become the leaders of "The Beat Generation." They include (clockwise from Amram): poet Allen Ginsburg, writer Gregory Corso (back to camera), artist Larry Rivers and author Jack Kerouac. Photo: John Cohen, Courtesy of david amram

En Route to Chicago, '68

Jean Genet, William Burrough, Alan Ginsberg--noted poet-activists who were also loud and proud Gay liberationists

'What's Going On?'

Marvin Gaye

The Last Poets

1968: the interplay of free verse poetry, improvisation and the politicis of race and revolution

'Ohio', 1970

CSNY's song offered chilling, driving commentary on the shootings at Kent State University

War Is Over!(if you want it)

A Christmas message from John and Yoko, Times Square, NYC, 1970

Bob Marley

"Get Up, Stand Up"

Samuel Friedman

The Socialist Party's cultural leader seen here in a 1977 pic with his wife. Friedman was a journalist and activist who, after the dissolution of the SP's arts efforts, became one of the Party's candidates for often on multiple occasion (photo by Steve Rossignol).

Peter Tosh

'Talking Revolution'

Rock Against Racism

here's the album collection which chronicled the 1976 and '78 British concerts established to fight the rising trend of neo-fascist skinhead gangs in the UK

Robert Mapplethorpe

This gifted, militantly Gay photogrpaher set off a firestorm of controversy in opposition to the neo-cons of the Reagan administration and the Edwin Meese "decency" doctrine.

Patti Smith

brazenly outspoken punk poet and activist, late 1970s

'Reds' 1982

Warren Beatty and Diane Keaton as John Reed and Louise Bryant, en route to Petrograd

ROCK AGAINST REAGAN

The Dead Kennedys headed up the bill for this protest concert, Washington DC, 1983

Nuyorican Poets Cafe

'Bedtime for Democracy'

Public Enemy

Karen Finley

The sexually provacative feminist performance artist did constant battle with the neo-cons of the 1980s and '90s and became a poster child for right-wing calls to suspend funding to the NEA

'Mumia 911'

This series of arts-actions occured in multiple spaces throughout NYC and other cities in an attempt to raise both funds and awareness for the cause of Mumia Abu-Jamal, journalist and Black Panther who was framed on a police murder charge in the lates '70s and continues to sit in death row now. For this event, NY's Brecht Forum hosted an all-day marathon on September 11, 1999, the house band of which was led by John Pietaro.

Pete Seeger, Music in the History of Struggle, 1999

with the Ray Korona Band, John Pietaro on percussion. 1199SEIU auditorium, NYC

Ani DiFranco

Fred Ho

The revolutionary saxophonist/composer has successfully forged an avant garde music which bridges improvisation and New Music composition w/ Marxism, Maoism and traditional Chinese folk art.

'Not in Our Name'

Charlie Haden reunites his revolutionary ensemble one more time to speak out against the Bush administration's manipulations of the populace, 2005.

The Brecht Forum

The Brecht Forum/NYC Marxist School came to be a fixture of Left education and culture in the early 1970s lasting through 2014.

New Masses Nights

Joe Hill

The Industrial Workers Band

Arturo Giovannitti, around 1912

brilliant IWW poet/organizer who composed epic pieces about his imprisonment and the struggle for a more equitable society

Ralph Chaplin

IWW songwriter and journalist who penned "Solidarity Forever" in 1911

John Reed at his desk

note the Provincetown Playhouse poster!

Robert Minor, 'The Masses'

July 1916

Louise Bryant

Crusading journalist seen here approx 1918

Max Eastman

writer, activist, editor of 'The Masses'

Isadora Duncan

Modern Dance in revolution

Robert Minor

The radical artist and leading CPUSA functionary

Michael Gold

Cultural conscience of 'the Daily Worker', 'New Masses' and acclaimed proletarian novelist seen here addresseing a May Day crowd on the streets of Manhattan, early 1930s.

"Costume Ball--Where All Toilers Meet!"

The Daily Worker, January 14, 1928

VJ Jerome

Communist Party cultural commissar

NYC, 1931: A delegation of the John Reed Club following a trip to Harlan County, VA

John Dos Passos, Theodore Dreiser, Sam Ornitz

'The Crisis'

1933, radical magazine of Black American militancy

Marc Blitzstein

member of the Composers Collective of New York

'Negro Songs of Protest'

Compiled by Lawrence Gellert, illustrations by his brother the great Communist artist Hugo Gellert. The songs were arranged by Ellie Siegmeister of the Composers Collective of NY

'The Workers Song book, Workers Music League, 1934

compiled by the Composers Collective of New York

American Artists' Congress

Signed by AAC Secretary STUART DAVIS

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

"Class Struggle"

Diego Rivera's amazing work told the story of the workers' fight against capitalist exploitation --and was created as a commision for Rockefeller Center's main hall. It was not long before John D had the piece destroyed.

'Processional', 1937

modernist drama by John Howard Lawson, a leader of CPUSA cultural activists

The Almanac Singers, 1941

THIS MACHINE KILLS FASCISTS

Woody

Silent speak-back to HUAC

George Orwell

the British writer maintained his democratic socialist views through his great novels

Earl Robinson, ca 1940s

member of the Composers Collective of New York, leader of the American People's Chorus and a musician of the people throughout his career. Among his compositions was "Joe Hill", "The House I Live in", "Ballad for Americans" and "Black and White"

Hanns Eisler, HUAC hearing, 1947

Trumbo and Lawson

Paul Robeson at Peekskill

Flanked by unionist and Communist guards, staring down the fascist mobs at Peekskill NY, 1949

Sinclair Lewis

'It Can't Happen Here'

Dashiell Hammet

closing out the HUAC onslaught

'Salt of the Earth'

Paul Robeson shouts down HUAC

"You are the Un-Americans--and you should be ashamed of yourselves!"

W.E.B. DuBois

Stockholm Peace Conference, 1955

'Rebel Poets of America', 1957 LP

Kenneth Patchen and Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Amiri Baraka

"We Insist!--Freedom Now Suite"

Max Roach with Abbey Lincoln

Lorraine Hansberry

Peter, Paul and Mary

1963 March on Washington

'Spartacus', 1964

The tale of a unified slave revolt was first written by Howard Fast in novel form and then realized for the screen by Dalton Trumbo

Bill Dixon's OCTOBER REVOLUTION IN JAZZ, 1964

John Coltrane

Seen here performing his powerful piece, "Alabama" on German television, 1965. The story of the church bombing which killed four African American girls and injured others was retold in this mournful work.

The Fugs

Radical Greenwich Village poets turn rock-n-rollers of a whole other sort, 1965

Freedom Marching

James Baldwin, Joan Baez, and James Forman (left to right) enter Montgomery, Alabama on the Selma to Montgomery march for voting rights, 1965.

You Can't Jail the Revolution

Shades of Chicago, '68

Sam Rivers

The great jazz musician who helped to found the avant garde loft scene in the 1960s was devoutly outspoken with regard to radical politics and the incorporation of same into his music. He is seen here performing at his own NYC space, Studio Rivbea. From the look of that tom-tom to the left, the drummer is Milford Graves who not only broke new ground into improvisational music but its part in Black liberation and other revolutionary struggles.

Henry Cow, late '60s

British avant rock band also engaged in social statements and celebrated the music of Brecht & Eisler

Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra

1969: Bassist extraordinaire Haden (right) unites with pianist-arranger Carla Bley (left), trumpeter Don Cherry (kneeling) and a wealth of others to create a radical album of anti-war music. Included in the collection was a powerful reconfiguring of Brecht and Eisler's Song of the United Front

Gil Scott Heron

"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"

MC 5

Kicking out the jam as well as the walls of conformity

Rally for John Sinclair

this fund- and awareness-raising event was in honor of the noted anti-war activist who'd been arrested on trumped-up drug charges. It featured John and Yoko, Alan Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Archie Shepp, Commander Cody and a host of others

Art Ensemble of Chicago

Revolutionary composition/improvisation: "a great Black music"

Victor Jara

The great Chilean revolutionary songwriter

TILLIE OLSEN w/MAYA ANGELOU

Writers March Against Apartheid, 1970s

Frederic Rzewski

In 1975 the composer created "THE PEOPLE UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED", inspired by the struggles of farm workers and militants around the globe

Richard Hell

Nihilistic poet of punk performing with the Voidoids at CBGB

ABC No Rio

activist performance space, NY's Lower East Side

'London Calling'

The Clash

Fela Kuti

Revolution in song from Nigeria

'Bonzo Goes to Bitburg', 1985

The Ramones satiric commentary on Reagan's visit to the Nazi soldiers cemetary

'Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing'

Artist Space, NYC, 1989: reactionaries tried at all costs to shut down this boldly outspoken exhibit on AIDS

Day Without Art

Visual AIDS and other arts activist organizations created a Day Without Art to commemorate World AIDS Day

Tupac Shakur

Militant Hip Hop 101

'Somebody Blew Up America'

Amiri Baraka, fearlessly taking on the controversial causes of the 9/11 attacks

Robeson

After falling victim to a nation which tried to disappear him, Paul Robeson is honored with his own stamp

The first Dissident Fest: The Dissident Folk Festival 2006

This event featured Malachy McCourt, Pete Seeger, Bev Grant, Lack and a bevy of radical jazz musicians, poets and more